Lopez and Lyons score Petreaus on his politically
correct verbal soft-shoe about Islam, pointing out that he overlooks or chooses
to ignore the fact of the Global Jihadist Movement (GJM), and that Islam is
fundamentally not “religion of peace”
that was “hijacked” by “extremists.” Jihadists, they write,

…are carrying out the core principles of
Islam as specified in the Quran, Shariah and the hadiths.

Anyone who
has bothered to peruse the Koran,
Sharia law, and the hadiths, will acknowledge that this is a true statement. I
maintain a folder devoted exclusively to violent Koranic verses; there are
over two hundred of them I could easily cite here. The core principles reside
in those verses and they are taken literally by jihadists of the Sunni and
Shi’ite branches of Islam – as they were meant
to be taken and which do not leave any room for subtextual interpretation. Those
verses do not represent a guide to becoming flower children, but rather to
becoming conquerors and killers.

Lopez and Lyons also upbraid Petreaus on his cheap
shot at the First Amendment.

Petreaus
not so subtly actually attacked our First Amendment rights when he expressed
his concern over the current political dialogue that highlights the threat from
Muslims and Islam. This was unconscionable! He has fallen into the trap of
“Don’t criticize or take a position that might offend” the seventh century
sensibilities of the followers of Islam.

Heeding that draconian advice would effectively
shut down all criticism of Islam – scholarly, satirically, and vocally. Permanently.
No one could open his mouth about or apply a pen to the subject without
inviting a Muslim or government “backlash.” And what were Petreaus’s squeamish
words?

Setting aside moral considerations, those
who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing
directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The terrorists’
explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations — telling
Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion. When
Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster
the terrorists’ propaganda. At the same time, such statements directly undermine
our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the
allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims….I fear that neither is true; in fact, the
ramifications of such rhetoric could be very harmful — and lasting.

Let’s parse that statement, and not “set aside moral considerations.”
After all, Muslims are the most sensitive crybabies around (until they become
crybullies).

“…those
who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing
directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.”

Not criticizing or mocking Islam has not
caused al-Qaeda or ISIS or a domestic Muslim convert to refrain from beheadings,
bombings, and conquests. Official government silence, on the other hand, has invited
the terrorists to commit more atrocities. Jihadists rush to fill the vacuum
left open by political correctness and appeals to “moderation.”

“The
terrorists’ explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations —
telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion.”

But the
clash of civilizations has been underway for decades, and no American president – not Reagan, not either of the Bushes, and
certainly not Obama – has ever had the courage or the moral rectitude to
recognize that the West ought to be
at war with Islam, especially because Islam has declared war on the West. The
“provocation” has come and gone, and Islam owns it.

“When
Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster
the terrorists’ propaganda.”

This is an
indirect reference to Donald Trump, but also to other critics of Muslims and
Islam who have proposed the same thing. I personally fail to understand how
speaking out against Islam and jihadists “bolsters” terrorists’ propaganda.
They will spew their propaganda regardless. They would prefer that we keep our
mouths shut and go quietly into the night, and that anyone voicing opposition
to Islam or Muslims or jihadists be silenced and punished in accordance with the
West ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of
Muslms by eviscerating freedom of speech (per the Muslim Brotherhood
Memorandum of 1992). Read a portion of the memorandum here.

“The
process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word
means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America
is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization
from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands
of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious
over all other religions.”

“At the same time, such statements directly
undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and
undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely,
Muslims.”

This is
news to me, that we have “allies” among Muslims in this country or elsewhere.
There’s nothing to “undermine.” A Muslim rooting for the Dallas Cowboys or
having an ice cream cone is not a definition of a Muslim “ally.”

But the
one statement by Lopez and Lyons that caught my attention was this:

Muslims do not consider Islam to be a
“religion.” They call it a “complete way of life.”

A complete way of life. I had encountered the phrase almost
repeatedly in my Islamic readings, but never grasped its significance in
relation to Islam until Lopez and Lyons stressed it.

Yes, I
knew that it meant the totality of
living. Lopez and Lyons wrote:

Clearly, our leaders need to understand that
Islam is a totalitarian ideology,
governed by an alien legal system called Shariah that obligates all Muslims to
carry out jihad to conquer the world and subjugate it to Islamic Law. [Italics
mine]

Every
dictator in history has preached a “way of life” to his subjugated citizens –
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. And in every instance those “ways of life” have
invariably led to misery, slaughter, and poverty. And to death. What the
dictators preached, however, was that the imposed “way of life” was a struggle
to achieve some of kind of happiness on earth.

Islam’s
notion of a “complete way of life” is quite the opposite.

And what
is a “religion?”

Every
definition of it I found boiled down to the same basic parameters: the
institutionalized worship of and reverence for a deity or supernatural being,
with obedience to the deity’s wishes in variance with the severity of the creed.
Some religions impinge on one’s daily life to some degree, or not at all. One’s
“way of life” can include following divinely given golden rules, or none at
all. But most religions allow one to set aside some quantum of mortality for
oneself.

Islam does
not. However, here are some excerpts from a handful of Islamic sites that
emphasize a “complete way of life.”

Argument 2: One could out of sheer academic
interest look at every aspect of life covered by Islam. Then one could develop
alternative forms for each aspect and thereby have a theoretically complete way
of life (assuming that Islam is indeed a complete way of life). However, the
alternative way of life, although complete, would obviously be a
humanly-inspired way of life. Again, being a complete way of life is not a
sufficient condition for being divinely-inspired. The very concept of divine
inspiration includes the concept of being a complete way of life.

This assumption holds that the concept of
divine inspiration logically entails, or analytically includes, the concept of
being a complete way of life.
[Emphasis mine]

Assumption 3: If a way of life is not
complete, then it is not divinely inspired.

It says
that while one may have a “religion,” it does not mean that the “religion” is a
“complete way of life.” It rejects the human element. Islam regards man-made
law as pernicious.

The Shari‘ah thus
prescribes directives for the regulation of our individual as well as
collective lives. These directives affect such varied subjects as religious
rituals, personal character, morals, habits, family relationships, social and
economic affairs, administration, the rights and duties of citizens, the
judicial system, the laws of war and peace and international relations. They
tell us what is good and bad; what is beneficial and useful and what is
injurious and harmful; what are the virtues which we have to cultivate and
encourage and what are the evils which we have to suppress and guard against;
what is the sphere of our voluntary, personal and social action and what are
its limits; and, finally, what methods we can adopt to establish a dynamic
order of society and what methods we should avoid. The Shari‘ah is a complete
way of life and an all-embracing social order. [Emphasis mine]

Sharia law commands that its “complete way of
life” be integrated with an “all-embracing social order.” Which means that
Islam is totalitarian, from top to bottom. It embraces everything you do, say,
or think.

Islam is a religion, but not in the western
meaning of religion. The western connotation of the term "religion"
is something between the believer and God. Islam is a religion that organizes all aspects of life on both the
individual and national levels.

Islam organizes your relations with God, with yourself, with your children,
with your relatives, with your neighbor, with your guest, and with other
brethren. Islam clearly establishes your duties and rights in all those
relationships.

Islam establishes a clear system of worship,
civil rights, laws of marriage and divorce, laws of inheritance, code of
behavior, what not to drink, what to wear, and what not to wear, how to worship
God, how to govern, the laws of war and peace, when to go to war, when to make
peace, the law of economics, and the laws of buying and selling. Islam is a complete code of life. [Emphasis mine]

Instead of the crescent and star,

this is the proper symbol of Islam

Islam is
arguably more totalitarian then were Nazism
and Communism. Nazism at least allowed you to eat your sauerkraut in peace
before you attended the next Munich rally or killed another Jew. Communism
allowed you gulp your vodka without recrimination before killing another kulak or
Polish officer in the Katyn Forest.

Islam allows
you nothing that is proscribed or specifically forbidden, or nothing that is
not halal. Every little detail of
living is governed by Islam, except for minor concretes, such as the brand of
your underwear or the make of your car.

And what
is the purpose of Sharia law and conforming to Islam? To gain a place in
Paradise. Life on earth is not important. One’s life is not important except as
it relates to Allah’s will and pleasure. Islam could be said to be similar to
Christian altruism. But in Christianity it is a virtue to sacrifice values. In
Islam, it is a virtue and an obligation to sacrifice non-values. Such as infidels, Jews, and other non-Muslims. Islam
can't value that which it condemns or does not value; albeit, the non-values can be eliminated, destroyed,
and infidels can be enslaved to serve Muslims and Islamic purposes.

Islam has
no values, not for anyone who values his life, not for anyone who wants to
achieve or keep values. It is the perfect system for those motivated by envy,
by hatred of the good for being the good, and by a Kantian will and rote-learned
imperative to destroy for the sake of destruction. The elimination of values is
the only value possible in Islam. And to a rational Western mind, that is a non-value.

Islam is
not interested in creating a Paradise on earth. It is interested only in
creating a perfect human society that abides by Allah’s wishes. It creates a
hermetically sealed society that permits no air, no choices, and no freedom, with
everything predetermined and beyond the realm of reason and choice. It is the
enemy of volition and values. It is a system of nihilism.

Islam is
literally a “complete way of death.” It is not for nothing that it is often called
a death cult by its critics. Its devout worship and live for death, in various
degrees of fervor, whether or not they consume ice cream or root for the Dallas
Cowboys or set off bombs in Belgian airports or slaughter concert goers in
Paris or massacre 3,000 people on 9/11.

The only
way for “peaceful” Muslims to cast off the stigma of responsibility for the
crimes committed in the name of Islam is to understand and repudiate Islam.

Men like
General Petreaus are politically correct ignoramuses and dhimmis.

However, do
we really want Islam— or systemic nihilism – to gain more than the toe-hold it
already has in America?

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Real life too often today puts satire to shame. I
shall begin with “Liberal Line Dancing.”

Some years ago in Baltimore I took a stroll through
a street festival near the Inner Harbor. One event I encountered was something I
hadn’t witnessed in person before: line dancing. I had become immersed in the subject
of dancing while researching the Sparrowhawk
series, set in 18th century Britain and America. I learned that it was only in
the early 19th century that individualized dance between couples was introduced
and became popular, preceded by the form of highly formalized and controlled
modes such as the minuet and its variants, in which the couples barely touched
each other.

Until then, from Medieval times to the present, dance
was largely a collective pastime. Line dancing seems to be a hybrid of square dancing,
which itself has roots in contra or country dancing preceding even Shakespeare’s
time, but without participants even having to touch anyone. I was obliged to square
dance in high school, and had to clasp the sweaty palms of dozens of others of
either gender I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Personal choice in such
affairs of one’s partners was ruled out.

In liberal political, synchronized line dancing,
all the players, in unison, wobble, wiggle, gesticulate, kick, turn about,
swivel their hips, pantomime, roll their shoulders, and place their hands over
their ears, mouths, and ears. The moves are commanded by a dance master,
accompanied by a fiddler playing a monotonous tune over and over again, or
perhaps with a Karaoke player. The most popular liberal line dances are called “The
Shuffle,” “The Dodge,” “Duck and Grovel,” “The Wet Dog,” “The Double Side Step,”
“Shake ‘n Bake,” “The Burqa Bop,” “The Muslim Moon,” “The Prayer Rug Stomp,” “The
Shadada Shimmy,” “The Cover Your Butt,” “The Twirly,” and “The Hillary Rodham.”

Of all the religious, ethnic, or political groups that
make up this country, only Muslims have no dance tradition. Islam does not
permit dancing, except for joyous, spontaneous jumping up and down every time
Americans or Westerners are killed. Muslims only believe in making babies, and
that can’t be comfortably done on the dance floor.

On a more serious note, one of the biggest allies
of Muslim immigration (and also of illegals from South of the Border) are the
myriad "fair housing laws." The federal government has issued them,
and so has every state and local municipality. "Fair housing laws"
prohibit discrimination by race, creed, etc. by property owners or landlords. I left this amended comment on a Sultan Knish
column, “Only
Islam Can Save Us From Islam.”

Employing this law, the feds and Christian charities that bring in Muslims by
the boat full can dump Muslims "immigrants" in places as urban as New
Jersey and as unlikely as Montana.

The irony of a "fair housing" law is similar to that of a state or
city banning smoking in "public" spaces like restaurants, private
clubs, and so on. The irony is that if you set the terms of whom one can
associate with in these conditions, you own the facility, not the owner.
Non-smokers wanted their "safe places" in which to dine. So bars and
restaurants lose business and eventually go out of it. I've seen it happen over
and over again where I live.

And if you try to prohibit Muslims from even applying for living space in this
country in a private venue, you no longer own your apartment or residential
block; the government does and the only beneficiaries are the
"discriminated" applicants. You will be called to court and fined up
the wazoo. And probably even told to pay compensation to Muslims for trying to
keep them out of your hair, out of your daughter's shorts, and off your neck in
terms of knives. You’ve hurt their feelings. Freedom of association is a dead
letter. If you can't choose your tenants, then you are but a steward of
"public" property, and the master sets the rules.

Related to this subject is the new, utterly bizarre
anti-discrimination rule in New York City, which prohibits private businesses
from barring LGBT and other anti-sex groups from employment and perhaps even
housing, and probably even forces bakeries to bake cakes or taking wedding
photographs of people you really don’t want to see or touch. Daniel Greenfield
discusses this rule in a Front Page article, “New
York is Enforcing Gender Identities It Can't Define.”

Individuals
living in New York City can choose from a minimum of 31 different gender
identities, many of which allow them to fluctuate between some version or a combination
of male or female identities.

The list
of protected gender identities is available online and includes options such as
“gender bender,” “two spirit,” “third sex,” “androgynous,” “gender gifted,” and
“pangender.” A city official confirmed
to The Daily Caller that all of the listed identities are protected by the
city’s anti-discrimination laws, but said that the list was not exhaustive.

“Exhaustive” is too delimiting a term. Say, rather,
the list can be expanded ad infinitum.
You have only to use your imagination.

Don’t blink, or you’ll miss page two of all the
alternative genders. Greenfield remarks: “About 70 percent of this list means
the same basic thing. Non-op is also redundant because the official doctrine
now is that a man can claim to be a woman without undergoing any surgery.”

Reading the list, I was reminded of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode
in which Dr. Beverly Crusher, the Enterprise’s medical officer, was having an
affair with a humanoid alien who was actually just the host of a parasite that
was the real intelligence. The host suddenly dies and a new one is sent for. The
actual alien, put in stasis until the new one arrives, resembled nothing less
than a bovine liver.

The new host arrives. It’s a woman.

Dr. Crusher rejects the prospect of having an
affair with her. When asked why by the host (speaking unseen for the
transplanted bovine liver), she responds that the human race “hasn’t progressed
that far yet.” Or words to that effect. Crusher would be amazed by the number
of “new” genders that don’t even include the livers of ungulates. Perhaps she
would prefer necking with the bladder of a yak. There are more genders on the New
York City Commission’s list than aliens in the crew of the Enterprise, more
aliens in gender than in a Star Wars
cantina sipping Galactic Slurpees.

Campus
Reform talked with Amber Katherine, a philosophy professor, to explain the
event and what it means. She said it was to bring about an "ecocentric
passion and even lust" for the Earth. Funding for this environmental
"marriage" came courtesy of SMC's Public Policy Institute, as well as
other campus organizations.

Rings were handed out and students were led
with the pronouncement, "With this ring, I bestow upon the sea the
treasures of my mind heart and hands—as well as my body and soul. With the
power vested in us, we now pronounce you ‘married to the sea.'"

Once "wed," the class was
instructed to "make love with the water" by dipping toes in the sea
"or any part of your body that you want."

Splish, splash! Looking out, of course, when
engaged in connubial bliss, for sharks, Portuguese-men-war, and moray eels.
When you marry the ocean, it isn’t promising you a rose garden. Still, the
ocean is what the New York City rules might define as “gender fluid.”

Meryl
Dickson, of The Walking Dead, in between sips of his whiskey, asks:

“Never mind socialism. Do they know anything about differential calculus?”

Let us not forget the landlocked Wiccans, who held
a formal ceremony in the name of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders. Craig Bannister of MRCTV reported on May 1st, in “Sanders Camp Holds Friday 13th ‘Ritual for
Bernie’ for Wiccans, Druids and Heathens”:

A
Bernie Sanders event in Portland, Oregon is inviting wiccans, Druids, heathens
and atheists to a “Ritual
for Bernie” to “raise the energy” of his presidential campaign:

“Clearly
you're feeling the Bern. Maybe you're a Wiccan? Pagan? Goddess worshiper?
Heathen? Druid? Spiritual but not religious? Secular Jew? Spiritually open
minded? Unaffiliated? Atheist who likes ritual? Other? And you would like to
engage with a community of like minded individuals to raise the energy of the
Bernie Sanders vibration to a higher frequency and ultimately change the world
for our children, grandchildren, and all future generations. I hear you!”

The
event is aptly set for Friday 13th in a place called Woodstock Park
– and, spelling errors aside, appears to be legitimate, since it claims to be
“Paid for by Bernie 2016” and lists both a “Contribute” button and Sanders’
official campaign mailing address.

With
such hope and change offered by the Wiccans, all Sanders needs now to clinch
the Democratic nomination is a rain dance by Elizabeth
Warren, that war bonnet-wearing faux
Cherokee Indian from Massachusetts.

From North Carolina State: “Sexy warriors: the politics and pleasures of
submission to the state”

Jesse
Paul Crane-Seeber, who received a Ph.D in International Relations at North
Carolina State University, wrote his dissertation on why “war is sexy in
contemporary US culture.” The paper, which was titled “Sexy warriors: the
politics and pleasures of submission to the state” allowed Crane-Seeber to
become an Assistant Professor in Public and International Affairs at NC State.

From
Palgrave Macmillan, publishers: “Pornographic Animals”

“Pornographic
Animals” is a text written by R. Malamud to explore the intersection of visual
sociology and human sexuality. In this groundbreaking work, published by
Palgrave Macmillan, Malamud writes about human-Animal intercourse and why
humans are sexually attracted to animals.

From
the University of California-Santa Barbara: “Smart Cookies: The Gendered
Spaces of Labor, Citizenship, and Nationalism in the Girl Scout Cookie Sale”

This
2013 PhD dissertation points out the danger of selling of girl scout
cookies and argues that the practice “prepares girls for their roles as
American women in a neoliberal and capitalist society.” According to the
author, the girl scout cookie selling tradition is responsible for aiding
in unconscious female support of “market capitalism, neoliberalism, and
American nationalism.” The dissertation argues that the annual girl scout
cookie sale manipulates young girls into blindly accepting American society’s
expected role for women.

From the University of Alberta: “The
Moving Body and Social Change”

Pirkko
Markula of the University of Alberta argues that one of the best ways to fight
capitalism is through personal exercise routines. According to Markula, through
her “experiences as a fitness instructor”, the work “explore[s] if it
is possible to practice movement differently beyond the biopolitics of
neo-liberalism.”

Had enough? There’s much more in Ciccotti’s
article, if you need a good laugh.

But do not laugh too hard or too long. These people exist in
the real world. They want you to come along with them and share their Kook Aid
and power bars. Progressivism is a long, long progression to insanity.

Edward Cline, American Novelist

Edward Cline was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1946. After graduating from high school (in which he learned nothing of value) and a stint in the Air Force, he pursued his ambition to become a novelist. His first detective novel, First Prize, was published in 1988 by Mysterious Press/Warner Books, and his first suspense novel, Whisper the Guns, was published in 1992 by The Atlantean Press. First Prize was republished in 2009 by Perfect Crime. The Sparrowhawk series of novels set in England and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period has garnered critical acclaim (but not yet from the literary establishment) and universal appreciation from the reading public, including parents, teachers, students, scholars, and adult readers who believe that American history has been abandoned or is misrepresented by a government-dominated educational establishment. He is dedicated to Objectivism, Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason in all matters.